Jason Eskenazi

The fall of the Berlin Wall led Eskenazi out of Queens into the larger world. After trips to Germany and Romania for their first democratic elections he traveled to Russia in 1991, just before the August coup that marked the end of the USSR, and has returned many times since culminating in a photography book project called Wonderland: A Fairy Tale of the Soviet Monolith, winner of Best Photography Book 2008 by Pictures of the Year International.

In 2004 he received a Fulbright Scholarship to return to Russia to make a series of large format color portraits called Title Nation with a Russian colleague which will be published Fall 2010.

Jason Eskenazi has received numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, 1999; The Dorothea Lange/Paul Taylor Prize, 1999, for his work in a Jewish Village in Azerbaijan; and The Alicia Patterson Foundation Grant, 1996. His work has appeared in many magazines including Time, Newsweek and The New York Times and Soros Foundation publications.

In 2004 -2005 Eskenazi organized a Kids with Cameras workshop in the old city of Jerusalem, teaching photography to Arab Muslims and Jewish children, which toured many U.S. cities.

For economic reasons as well as to obtain health insurance Eskenazi took a job as a Security Guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from March 2008 – Nov 2009. He created and co-edited a new independent magazine called SW!PE which showcased the artwork of museum guards, and received a lot of media attention. While guarding the Looking In exhibition at the museum, he also began the creation of the Americans List: By the Glow of the Jukebox, which recorded the choices and comments of over 250 photographers who were influenced by Robert Franks seminal work, The Americans.

Eskenazi quit the museum and used saved funds in order to continue photographing for his next project The Black Garden set in the geographical locations known to the ancient Greeks, investigating the east-west divide, while basing himself in Istanbul. He was also the International Curator/ Creative Director for the Bursa Photo Fest for its first 2 years.

He is also a co-founder and editor of DOG FOOD, a newspaper blending Cynic Philosophy and Photography.

Jason’s Website

Alan Chin

Alan was born and raised in New York City’s Chinatown. Since 1996, he has worked in China, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Central Asia. Domestically, Alan has followed the historic trail of the civil rights movement, documented the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and covered the 2008 presidential campaign. He is a contributing photographer to The New York Times, the Chinese magazine Modern Weekly, writer and photographer for BagNews, editor and photographer at Newsmotion, photographer at Facing Change: Documenting America (FCDA), and his work is in the collection of the Museum Of Modern Art.

Alan's first Red Hook Editions book, due to be completed in 2015, will document his ancestral region of Toishan in southern China.

Alan’s Website

Peter van Agtmael

Peter was born in Washington DC. He studied history at Yale, graduating with honors in 2003.

He has won the W. Eugene Smith Grant, the ICP Infinity Award for Young Photographer, the Lumix Freelens Award, as well as awards from World Press Photo, American Photography Annual, The Pulitzer Center, The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and Photo District News.

Peter joined Magnum in 2008 and became a full member in 2013.

Peter’s Website

Carlos Javier Ortiz

Carlos Javier Ortiz was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and raised in Chicago. As a visual artist, he works with photography, film and text and specializes in long-term documentaries that focus on urban life, gun violence, race, poverty and marginalized communities. Ortiz collaborates with his subjects by asking them to share their personal narratives and testimonials. His work confronts human suffering while simultaneously illuminating compassion and optimism. 

Ortiz has received numerous accolades for his work, including the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights Photography award for his series “Too Young to Die,” a multi-year, comprehensive examination of youth violence in the United States and Central America.  He has also received grants from the Open Society Foundations, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the California Endowment National Health Journalism Fellowship, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award.

Ortiz’s photographs have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, and are displayed in the permanent collections of the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, the International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, N.Y., the Library of Congress in Washington, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Carlos Javier Ortiz lives in Chicago and Oakland, Calif. 

Carlos’ Website